Marvel Movie Marathon: Thor

Marvel Movie Marathon: Thor: This is really a pretty straight-up enjoyable movie. Given my recently-discussed inherent level of dubiousness regarding Iron Man, you will perhaps be surprised to hear that the character I absolutely thought they *could not* make work in a cinematic universe was Thor. I thought—honestly, I *still* think—that introducing gods into a superhero world was asking too much from the audience, and the fact that they went to a mild degree of trouble to ensure everybody that no, these are technically aliens, not gods, did not, IMHO,…

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Marvel Movie Marathon: Iron Man 2

Marvel Movie Marathon: Iron Man 2: I saw most of IM2 again a couple years ago and I thought it had held up a *lot* better than expected. My memory of it was that it really wasn’t very good, which is borne up by the fact that basically everybody seems to think it really wasn’t very good, but…actually, it’s pretty good. It does, yes, have the problem of following very similar beats to the original film in terms of the Whiplash storyline, which ends with him in a giant mech…

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Marvel Movie Marathon: Iron Man

Marvel Movie Marathon: Iron Man: omg I had somehow managed to forget the sheer level of asshole Tony was in the first part of Iron Man. Back in 2006 or whatever when Marvel said they were floating an Iron Man movie, I, an X-Men fan who never cared much about the Avengers, was like “why would anybody make a movie about a 2nd tier character like Iron Man that nobody cares about anyway.” Ted, who is much more of an Avengers fan, objected strenuously to “2nd tier” and argued in…

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Captain America: The First Avenger vingage-style movie poster by Paolo Rivera

Marvel Movie Marathon: Captain America: The First Avenger

Someone on The Internets pointed out, late last year, that if a person was to watch a Marvel movie every week in the new year, they would wrap up just in time for Avengers: Infinity War, which is out (here, at least) on April 28th. Ted and I thought that was a great idea and set out to do so, with the thought in mind that we would watch them all chronologically, starting, clearly, with Captain America: The First Avenger. (Here’s a full chronological list of the Marvel Cinematic Universe,…

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Picoreview: The Last Jedi

Picoreview: The Last Jedi: Eh. The thing is, someday I’ll stop expecting to love Star Wars movies. They are not for me. I’ve never cared much. I didn’t see the originals until I was more or less an adult, and lack the rose-colored glasses most of my (and subsequent) generations view them with. Rogue One is the only one that’s ever managed to disappoint me because it’s the only one I thought was going to be different, but it was just a Star Wars film, albeit one in which rocks…

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